UK Arms Exports: Killing In The Name Of

The UK state, and the arms industry it cherishes, are complicit in these events, these human rights violations, these atrocities. Westminster fuels the fires of North Africa and the Middle East. That is why the following information matters to the pursuit of global justice and to the choice that Scotland faces in 2014. We must seek military-industrial Independence.

Complicity in genocide did not sour the UK’s appraisal of arms exports. Here are six recent cases.

1) Israel

In 2008-09 Israel bombed Gaza in ‘Operation Cast Lead’. A UN investigation concluded that Israel had deliberately targeted civilians with 350 children among those killed. UK arms exports were “almost certainly” used, according to the Government. A review of export sales was promised.

War makes big profits. Armaments sold to Indonesia, Saudi Arabia and Bahrain are not merely condoned by the UK state, they are facilitated and incentivised. This is corruption of human dignity. That the UK state promotes profiteering from violence is the worst indictment of its political system. The expenses scandal or manifesto deceits shrivel in stark contrast to the humanitariantragedies of the arms industry. Its leaders are enveloped within the culture and finance of Whitehall – in the UKTI DSO, which facilitates arms exports, and through arms subsidies which incentivise them.

Such militarism doesn’t come cheap. Despite their status as private corporations – and their reliance upon state procurement programs – arms exports are subsidised by the taxpayer. Recent analysis, also by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, measured this subsidy as £2.1bn over the past 3 years. This is accrued through research and development funding and export credits. BAE Systems ploughed nearly £100m of research funding into 18 UK universities. (the University of Glasgow refused to comply) The Government pays the bills while BAE reaps the rewards of research and profitable arms sales. Such generous funding co-exists with a sycophantic political will. Political will is often short-sighted and damaging. With arms exports at only 2% of UK manufacturing, the state support is staggering. The downgrading of renewable energy in Westminster adds to this incredulity.

This is the UK state. James Foley’s pamphlet The Internationalist Case For Independence makes the case that arms deals form a fragment of a wider imperialism. The UK, the author claims, is an accomplice within the ‘American Order’ of capital and militarism. Britannia is the Athens to America’s Rome, as ‘damp squib’ Niall Fergusonwould have us believe.

This recognises the second answer to ‘Killing in the Name Of?‘. There is profit – as drove Halliburton to $17.2 billion from Iraq, BAE to a ‘urgent’ influx of £400 million from Afghanistan, and concerns the industry today when “Peace is bad for business.” And there is UK ‘cultural exceptionalism’. That was the attitude which led Ernest Bevin to say of acquiring nuclear weapons, “We’ve got to have this thing over here, whatever it costs…We’ve got to have the bloody Union Jack on top of it.” The mythology of this state is invested in conflict and weaponry. Only within the bunkers and towers of Whitehall can they justify the £2.1 billion spent on arms research and development, 10% of total output. The methods of UK power and coercion are inescapable; military prowess demands exploitation in word, funding and deed. Attlee’s Government failed to escape it; and each successive Government since has clung to the military, to war, to Polaris or Trident. Arms deals help to disguise the political impotency of Britain’s imperial decline One day it will end, perhaps with a thud.

Until then Scotland sinks in a cultural malaise – unable to recognise the most regressive and violent aspects of the UK state. Iraq. Trident. Arms sales. Where is the true union? Perhaps it is found in Abu Dhabi where UKTI DSO, General Dynamics UK and the Libyan Army united at the IDEX Arms Fair. In unison, the UK Government, the arms industry and the British Embassy in Tripoli campaigned to cement the deal with the ‘mad dog’ of North Africa. By July 2008 there was celebration: communications systems for Gaddafi’s tanks were sold. In DMA News (Defence Manufacturers Association) the Government heralded “a first step towards further Industrial Partnerships with Libya”. There weren’t many more steps. Soon the Government spoke of Gadaffi going ‘door-to-door’ in Benghazi. British technology meant Gaddafi knew where to go. The desert shook under the weight of our expensive technological warfare. Yet, for the sun-struck militias, there was nothing to fear: NATO’s Tomahawk missiles were coming for humanitarian purposes. Where blood shines upon the sand, Britain will be there. That is our Union.

As individuals we have distant views of the world’s bloodshed, yet the UK Government still holds power in the Middle East and North Africa. The problem is that it is a destabilising power. War, occupations and arms exports are all aggressive forms of power. As National Collective point out in this excellent editorial, the referendum is between “two very different ideologies of power”. The power to coerce is less and less relevant to the modern world; with the mushroom cloud of war appearing increasingly outdated in a post-Cold War world. The power of Scotland to promote universal education, clean energy, and nuclear disarmament is truly significant in contrast. That is the underlying message of the UK arms industry – its destruction and its growing irrelevance – from which Scotland can gain true military-industrial Independence.

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Ever get the feeling that nuclear will be the weapons of the past? Technology & and the security of it will be the future. Just look at CERN. Only a matter of time before they use this to develop weapons of the future. When they first spilt the Atom they said “we have released a monster”

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